Unitarian consecration hall
The Unitarian Weihehalle is the meeting place of the religious community of Unitarians in Frankfurt am Main . It was built from 1958 to 1960 according to plans by the architect Alfred Schild as a rotunda on the corner plot of Mainstrasse / Fischerfeldstrasse . The building is the only modern sacred building within the Frankfurt system ring .
Church history
The Unitarian Free Religious Congregation in Frankfurt am Main came into being in the middle of the 19th century. In the context of the Paulskirchen movement , Roman Catholic , Protestant and Jewish believers who rejected the dogmatic guidelines of the established religious communities were looking for religious independence. The new community, which initially called itself " German Catholic ", deliberately renounced a "holy" scripture or a firm creed . Today the community feels obliged to religious humanism . It is recognized as a corporation under public law .
Building history and architecture
The community had had a community center at Grosse Kornmarkt 15 since 1892 . After the air raids in 1944 , which destroyed these rooms, the Paulskirche in Frankfurt was used provisionally . When a new building was possible, the municipality took over a plot of land on Fischerfeldstrasse from the city.
Alfred Schild, who had made a name for himself in 1956 with the Evangelical Church of the Redeemer in Frankfurt-Oberrad, was won as the architect . In 1956/1957 he designed the consecration hall for the Unitarians, a clear, modern round building on an oval floor plan with side window slots. The seating dispenses with pews and aims at the slightly raised altar area, which is emphasized by a skylight. Facing Mainstrasse, the curved façade with a flying roof on slender supports forms a show façade. This form is common in church construction of the time, but is also interpreted in part to refer to the Paulskirche. The consecration hall was completed in 1960 on the basis of Schild's designs and expanded to include a community center in the following years.
Today, the building is the only one of all the Unitarian meeting places in Germany to be listed .
Interior decoration and equipment
In favor of a calm room atmosphere, the consecration hall almost completely dispenses with artistic furnishings. In Schild's drafts, a concrete glass design for the window slots and a wall painting for the facade on Mainstrasse were planned, neither of which was implemented. Only a gallery support and the small window openings above the gallery are decorated with abstract colored leaded glass windows . For the altar and the pulpit, artists from the Offenbach School of Applied Arts designed stylized cross motifs that can be interpreted as a rose or sun cross. They were executed as a slate relief on the pulpit and as a mosaic on the altar . In 1963 the consecration hall received an organ.
literature
- Karin Berkemann : Post-war churches in Frankfurt am Main (1945–1976) (= monument topography of the Federal Republic of Germany, cultural monuments in Hesse , volume 51). Theiss, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-8062-2812-0 (also dissertation, Neuendettelsau, 2012).
- Deutscher Werkbund Hessen, Wilhelm E. Opatz (Ed.): Once praised and almost forgotten. Modern churches in Frankfurt am Main 1948–1973. Niggli, Sulgen 2012, ISBN 978-3-7212-0842-9 .
- Wolf-Christian Setzepfandt : Architecture Guide Frankfurt am Main / Architectural Guide . 3. Edition. Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-496-01236-6 .
- Herbert Todt (ed.): Unitarian free religion. Collection of sources on the history of its development in Frankfurt am Main. Frankfurt am Main 1970.
- Clemens Taesler : Ten basic ideas of the Unitarian religion. Frankfurt am Main 1948.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Berkemann, p. 154.
Coordinates: 50 ° 6 ′ 37.9 ″ N , 8 ° 41 ′ 24.3 ″ E